(This Feb 7 story has been repeated with no changes to the text)
WASHINGTON - Tulsi Gabbard, currently serving as U.S. Director of National Intelligence, pushed back on allegations that she obstructed Congress from receiving a top-secret whistleblower complaint, asserting she acted promptly once notified of the administrative steps needed to share it.
The complaint in question, filed last May by an anonymous government official with the intelligence community's inspector general, alleged that the director's office sought to prevent the standard dissemination of certain classified intelligence for political reasons.
Gabbard, who was appointed to the post by Republican President Donald Trump last year, has been accused by lawmakers of delaying the complaint's transmission to congressional intelligence committees by not issuing required security guidance. A November letter from Andrew Bakaj, the whistleblower's lawyer, addressed to Gabbard's office and shared with the House and Senate intelligence committees, alleged that such a failure hindered lawmakers' access to the complaint.
Democratic officials, including Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, have argued that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was legally obliged to notify Congress of the May complaint within 21 days. Those officials maintain that the agency should not have waited until February to relay the matter to congressional oversight.
On social media, Gabbard accused Democrats of spreading a "blatant lie" about her handling of the complaint. She wrote on X that successive inspectors general who served under both President Trump and President Joe Biden did not find the complaint to be credible.
Gabbard further noted a statutory detail in her post: the 21-day transmission requirement, she said, "only applies when a complaint is determined by the Inspector General to be both urgent AND apparently credible." Her statement framed the timing issue as contingent on that dual determination by the inspector general.
According to Gabbard's account, she had not been informed by the inspector generals that the whistleblower had chosen to transmit the complaint to Congress, a step that would have required her to issue security instructions. She said that once she was made aware on December 4 of the need to provide those security guidelines to permit sharing with lawmakers, she took "immediate action" to do so.
News organizations reported that the complaint reportedly involved the handling of an intelligence intercept related to an individual close to Trump. Reuters could not independently verify the contents of the original complaint.
The dispute centers on both procedural points - the timing of communications between inspector general offices, ODNI, and congressional committees - and the interpretation of the legal threshold that triggers a mandatory 21-day notice to Congress. Gabbard's statement places emphasis on the role of the inspector general's credibility determination as the operative trigger for that statutory deadline.
At stake in the public back-and-forth are competing accounts of whether administrative steps were followed and whether the ODNI's delay, if any, constituted a violation of the statutory timeline. Gabbard's assertion that she acted promptly after being notified of the need to provide security guidance speaks to her office's view of the sequence of events; Democratic critics contend the agency should have transmitted the complaint sooner under the statute cited by Senator Warner.
Contacted parties and verifications: Reuters was unable to verify the underlying complaint's contents. The Guardian and the New York Times have reported the complaint's subject matter as relating to the handling of an intelligence intercept involving someone close to former President Trump. Gabbard's public statements describe inspectors general across two administrations as finding the complaint not credible.